January 11, 2009

Trust But Confirm

Jan Freeman, in her language column in today’s Boston Globe, shares a complaint she’s been sent from readers: people asking us to “confirm” or to “verify” information when what they really mean is, “give me the information yourself.” Freeman’s answer: (nicely) get over it.

Of course if we just got over it, Freeman and other language writers wouldn’t have much to say. And it’s fun to bring up peeves. When I read the first paragraph of her column to my husband, he brought up his own -- that when you’re on a plane and about to land, the pilot says you are making your “initial descent.” Why an “initial” descent? Does the pilot envision that you’ll some of the time have to climb again and then start over?

Well, I googled the matter, and after a few false starts “‘initial descent’ dictionary” gave me my answer. It is a technical term, referring to the part of the flight before the “final” descent. The “initial descent” begins when the seat belt sign is turned on and ends with the “double ding/blue light.”

As for confirm/verify, here is my guess. At times, a patient is shown a piece of paper and asked to literally confirm that the name and birthdate on the paper are hers. One possibility is that the meaning of the word has slid from this meaning to the related meaning, when, over the telephone and thus with an added constraint on the information passed from the office to the patient, the equivalent request is made. Another possibility is that “verify,” here, is an abbreviated form of “help us to verify.” Freeman’s correspondents may have a point if this is the case, though; it’s one thing to help someone who needs to verify specific information, another to be asked to do all the verifying oneself.

It’s not a very important point, of course, and I’m exaggerating a bit -- but if I hadn’t sympathized with her correspondents just for a moment, I would never have learned the meaning of that other word, would I have? And then I wouldn’t have written this blog post. And then you, dear reader, would have had nothing to read.